L AST Saturday, I went from a matinee of “Wit” to a 7 p.m. show of “Blue Man Group: ‘Tubes'” at the Astor Place Theatre, where it has been since 1991. It was a transition not so much from one play to another as from one universe to another.

On entering, I was handed paper streamers and offered a plastic raincoat. The audience was in their teens and 20s; some were clearly foreign tourists.

A rock band caused the small space to reverberate. People were eating cake and drinking soda. It was a party.

A party run for eight years can get a bit mechanical and routine, but “Tubes” is good-humored and fresh enough. The concept of the show might be described as Jackson Pollock meets “Animal House.”

It’s mime, basically, as three characters encased in shiny blue aquatic head makeup toy silently and solemnly with a variety of objects.

When you laugh, they look at you in shock and reproof, and you laugh all the more. They catch marshmallows in mouths and discharge blue goo from breastplates. Words appear from time to time: An electronic crawl speculates on the nature of a plastic fish, and a taped lecture on chaos topples into profane self-mockery.

Two spectators are dragged into the proceedings; a young woman is given flowers as “Bolero” sounds and “Christina’s World” appears. This kitschy courtship by the shy Harlequins ends with mushed bananas squirting from breastplates.

I regretted that the authors (and original performers) of “Blue Man” – Matt Goldman, Phil Stanton, Chris Wink – didn’t trust us with more of their impish, postmodern humor. These clearly clever guys need not have been quite so eager to bury every hint of wit beneath tubes of goo.

But it’s good to see kids going eagerly to something like theater.

The other long-running example of visionary mime is “Stomp,” which originated in the U.K. in 1991 and has been at the Orpheum Theatre in New York since 1994.

Amid a decor crammed with garbage cans and lids, eight performers in faux-scruffy work clothes organize a series of kinetic spectacles. At first, Jason Mills (the evening’s central presence) enters solo pushing a broom, like Gene Kelly making art with working-class props.

Soon there’s a symphony of eight brooms banging out something like “Yankee Doodle.”

Plungers, mops, pails, barrels, rubber pipes (with squeak reproaching squeak) – all the humble instruments of cleaning become joyous props. A bit involving four sinks squirting water is much funnier – because it’s more imaginative – than the excretory stuff in “Tubes.”

The strongest number involves mano-a-mano clashes with sticks, a duel with the eerie feel of samurai bouts in Kurosawa films.

“Stomp” is a brilliantly original work of modern movement, more thoughtful and integrated than the ostensibly more intellectual “Tubes.”

Dance and theater educators are missing a huge bet if they don’t capitalize on the palpable enthusiasm for both shows to enlarge the theater-going habit.